


Seek and ye shall find

by m_findlow



Category: Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 00:18:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13422681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_findlow/pseuds/m_findlow
Summary: Jack tries out a new game with Ianto





	Seek and ye shall find

Ianto entered Jack's office, just as he always did this time of the evening, after everyone else had gone home, bringing a final cup of coffee to be laid on his desk.

'Did you have any plans for this evening, sir?' It was the polite way of saying, are you planning on causing trouble, for which you might need backup, or are you planning on doing nothing more than mindless paperwork, in which case an early night would be greatly appreciated.

Jack looked slightly nervous as his gaze met Ianto's. This was either going to be amazing, or a spectacular disaster.

'I was thinking maybe we could grab some dinner and see where the night takes us.'

'Oh, okay.' They'd had a few nights together, which had devolved into nothing more than a desperate need to have sex, but this was all still a bit new to him. That they'd salvaged anything from their relationship after the incident with the Cyberwoman was surprising, but it was still very early days, and he expected that Jack would probably lose interest in him soon.

Full of food, which had been several large containers of delicious curries and flatbreads, lazing on the sofa, Ianto felt Jack's hand drift over to his knee. He knew what came next.

'Did you want to go downstairs?' Ianto asked. It wasn't that he didn't want to, but the sooner Jack could be satiated, the sooner Ianto could get some dearly needed sleep.

'Actually,' Jack began, 'I was thinking maybe we could try something different tonight.'

'Different like what?'

'Like maybe we could play a game?'

Ianto narrowed his eyes at Jack. 'What kind of game?'

'Hide and seek?'

'You want to play hide and seek? What are you, five years old?'

'Well, I mean it's like hide and seek, but it's not actually hide and seek. Well, it is hide and seek, but it's naked hide and seek,' Jack trailed off.

'Naked hide and seek,' Ianto repeated, sounding dubious. 'And what exactly are the rules for this game?'

Jack began reciting the rules he'd devised, feeling his confidence returning with each sentence.

'You get ten seconds for every piece of clothing. You have to hide each piece separately before going to hide yourself. When time is up, I'll come looking for you. Each piece of clothing I find before I find you, gives you ten less seconds next time around.'

Ianto did a mental inventory of his attire: jacket, vest, tie, shirt, pants, underwear, two shoes, two socks. Ten items in all. One hundred seconds. Then he paused and looked at Jack.

'By my reckoning you've got one less piece of clothing than me. Coat, shirt, t-shirt, pants, underwear, two shoes and two socks. That's nine.'

'Ten,' Jack relied, pointing to his vortex manipulator, having already done his own math. 'Fair and equal.'

'Right. And so what happens, theoretically, when you get down to one piece of clothing?' Ianto asked, knowing there had to be more to this little game of Jack's. 'You're not going to get very far in ten seconds to hide it, let alone yourself as well.'

'Those are the rules,' Jack replied.

'And when you run out of clothes?'

'First person who runs out of clothes and gets found is the prize for the other person.'

'Ah,' Ianto said, everything slotting into place. 'You find them, you get to fuck them.'

'Crudely put, but yes.'

Jack searched Ianto's face for any signs of reticence or hesitation but found none. Then again, he'd become a master of concealing his emotions. He might just as easily have walked out on Jack right here and now, but he didn't.

'That all seems reasonably straightforward,' Ianto replied.

Jack let out the huge breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding on to. 'Good,' was all he managed in response. 

'And is this game something you've played with others before?'

'Er, no, actually.'

Ianto quirked an eyebrow at him. 'You invented it just for me?'

Jack felt himself bristling. 'I suppose,' he warily answered.

Ianto just hummed in response. Jack wasn't sure what that meant.

'Well, should we get started then?' Ianto asked.

'Okay,' Jack replied, feeling a slight fluttering buzz of excitement. 'I'll count first and you go hide.'

Ianto turned to look around the hub before looking back at Jack.

'Eyes closed, Jack. That's one of the main rules, isn't it? At least it was when I was a kid.'

'Oh, yeah, sorry,' he said, distracted by the fact that this was really happening. 'Oh, and one more rule. No hiding in the archives.'

Ianto scoffed at him. 'One hundred seconds to hide me and all my clothes. How on earth would I get there in time?'

 

Jack closed his eyes and began counting loudly, imagining Ianto beginning to strip and hiding the items around the hub, bare as the day he was born, finding himself grinning at the sight. This would be fun, but would naturally play to Jack's own strengths. Jack knew that with Ianto's own penchant for being ridiculously neat and tidy, that he'd waste half his time folding up his clothes and rolling up his tie, before tucking them away somewhere for Jack to find. At that rate, he wouldn't be more than twenty yards from Jack's position by the time he reached a hundred.

Jack loudly declared one hundred and opened his eyes. He had expected Ianto to still be frantically padding around looking for somewhere to squeeze himself, but the hub was both silent and empty.

Jack began looking under desks and in cupboards, certain that Ianto wasn't far away. He'd strained to hear him whilst he was counting but it was hard. Traversing the hub, he did manage to find a shoe, tucked in one of Gwen's desk drawers. He also accidentally uncovered a sock, laid flat inside one of Owen's files, when he'd spied it on the desk, wondering why it hadn't he yet been completed.

He searched every other cupboard and drawer but came up empty. It wouldn't do to find too many of Ianto's clothes, he decided. He'd prefer this game to go on for a little while. Time to go searching for the man himself. He tried to put himself in Ianto's shoes, thinking where he'd likely go, but found the task more difficult than anticipated. Trying to get inside the young man's head at any time was challenging. Still, he looked around and his eyes fell on his office. He walked over to it and descended the ladder to his bunker. It was dark down there, and a perfect spot for hiding, though a little obvious. He checked under the bed and in the bathroom, but finally found Ianto standing upright in his wardrobe.

'Hello,' he said, giving a little wave. 'How did I do?'

'Not bad for a first attempt,' Jack said, holding up the shoe and sock. 'You get to keep the rest.'

 

Ianto made Jack stay down in the bunker whilst he retrieved the rest of his clothes, redressing with one bare foot. It wouldn't do for Jack to know where he'd hidden the rest.

'Your turn now,' he said, standing up in Jack's office, closing his eyes and beginning to count, whether Jack was ready or not.

Jack grinned and dashed off, tugging at the buttons on his shirt as he ran.

It only took Ianto a few minutes to find Jack, cosily laying inside one of Owen's morgue drawers, pulling it out and showing off his shirt, underwear and a shoe as additional finds.

Ianto was disappointed not to find Jack's coat on the first go, thinking it to be the most bulky and difficult thing hide.

'Looks like you'll be going commando for the next round,' he said, looking down at Jack's prostrate body.

 

Ianto picked up the rules of the game very quickly, learning from both his and Jack's own mistakes from their first round. Ianto had made the mistake of confining himself to the immediate hub area, and Jack had make the error of making too much noise as he ran around the hub. Ianto combined both mistakes into a single trick. Removing his shoes first meant he could move quietly around the hub, and not only that, but he realised you didn't have to hide everything within the time limit, you only had to keep yourself hidden long enough to hide the rest.

With his new tactics in place, he made a lot of ground, skipping silently up the stairs to deposit clothes in the boardroom and the hothouse, his earlier weariness forgotten. Jack had even made things easy for him because he only had one shoe to remove.

Jack too had learned from Ianto, taking a good fifteen minutes to find him the second time around, but having scored a vest and a jacket in the process.

As the game wore on, their distance and hiding got more and more creative. Ianto had the advantage though, his eagle eye able to spot even the tiniest thing out of place, which was made easier when Jack hastily shoved his pants in the microwave upstairs, but left the end of the leg hanging out of the door.

 

When Jack started losing clothing at a much faster rate than his companion, he could tell that the game he'd thought he'd so cleverly invented wasn't going quite to plan. He was reduced to his t-shirt and vortex manipulator, everything else out on display. Ianto on the other hand still had underwear, pants, and his shirt.

When Jack finished counting, he quickly snuck over to his computer and pulled up the CCTV footage from the last two minutes. He watched as Ianto dashed across the hub and down towards the cells, stopping by the rift machine and tucking his pants in behind the open panel.

Ah ha, he had Ianto this time, tugging the pair of pants out and prancing down to the cells, picking up a shirt along the way, which had been hidden at the bottom of a storage crate.

Downstairs it was dark. Ianto had chosen one of the disused levels of cells, and was hiding himself under the low stone shelf in one of the cells, certain Jack wouldn't come looking for him here. When his pants and shirt were dumped just inches from his face, and two bare feet came into view, he knew Jack must have somehow cheated.

He crawled out from under the ledge and looked annoyed.

'There's no way you could've found me that fast.'

Jack grinned. 'Maybe I'm just cleverer than you give me credit for.'

 

Ianto, fuelled by a need to avenge Jack's cheating ways, was determined that this be the very last round. Jack only had twenty seconds to hide, so as soon as Ianto began counting, he ran like the clappers out of the hub, not worrying about divesting what little he had left until he'd put some distance between them. He doubled back the way they'd come, assuming that Ianto would never think to look for him in the same place Ianto himself had just hidden.

He lay there for what seemed like an eternity, convinced that his own cleverness was about to win him the game. He'd devised a new rule three rounds ago that if you didn't find the other person within twenty minutes, you forfeited a piece of your own clothing. With Ianto down to his underwear only, Jack was sure he had this one in the bag.

Ianto was beginning to get frantic. He was determined to find every last bit of Jack's clothing before going after the man himself. He'd uncovered Jack's t-shirt, but the vortex manipulator remained frustratingly elusive. Knowing that his time was running out, he conceded that he'd have to wait until next round, hoping Jack would hide it somewhere easier to find. He went back over all the places Jack had hidden before, certain that Jack might try and double bluff him by using the same place twice, before returning to all his own hiding spots, finding Jack at the last moment, tucked away down in the cells.

'You almost won,' Ianto said, consulting his watch, which was excluded from the clothing tally.

'I was staring to think you weren't coming for me,' Jack replied.

'Maybe if I'd cheated I would have found you sooner.'

'I didn't cheat,' Jack protested, the lie slipping easily from his lips.

'You keep telling yourself that.'

 

Jack stood excitedly in the middle of the hub, knowing victory was tantalizingly close.

'What's say I give you an extra ten seconds,' he offered, 'just to make it a fair fight.'

Ianto gratefully accepted the extra time. It was the least Jack could do really, the dirty, rotten cheater, and he knew exactly where he was going to hide.

When Jack opened his eyes, Ianto was gone. That man could really move, he thought. He rifled through the pile of discarded clothing they'd left lying on the sofa, which looked slightly more rumpled than he remembered, finding Ianto's underwear secreted inside one of Jack's large coat pockets. Yes, he thought. That was almost too easy. Now all he had to do was go and claim his prize.

After fifteen minutes, Jack was at a loss. He was sure he'd tried everywhere he could think of, and still Ianto was nowhere to be found. He considered the archives, but he knew that unlike himself, Ianto would stick to the rules. As twenty minutes clicked over, Jack had to concede defeat.

'Okay, where the heck are you hiding?' he yelled out, assuming that Ianto was somewhere he could hear him.

'Up here!' the voice yelled back.

Jack looked up, seeing nothing, until a tiny head appeared over the ledge of Myfanwy's nest.

He climbed the stairs up the fourth level until he came to the narrow gangway that lead across to the high platform. Ianto was sitting there tucked up in the thick layers of straw, looking pleased with himself.

'I think that means I won,' he said. 'Do I get my prize now?'

'I belive you're correct,' Jack said, walking over, slowly undoing his vortex manipulator, like it was fine lingerie, before lying down next to him in the straw. Ianto did indeed claim his prize, kissing and caressing Jack, before finally taking him just the way he wanted.

This was definitely one game he didn't mind losing, Jack decided, and he got the feeling that it wouldn't be the last time they played either.


End file.
